I checked my fuel use today. I averaged 0.468 oz per min for 1.5 hours of flying. Engine is the Syssa, 30 cc, with a Vess 18.5x5.5 prop. A 16 oz tank in the plane gives me a little over 30 min of flying.

The way I speed things up is to load the links I use the most into my browser "favorites." When I get an email from RCU, I go to the browser and select the link and it will open at the "normal" speed.

I'm not sure why this works, but to me it is just the "new" way that RCU works. I think RCUs' motto is "a new feature a day."
It is also interesting to note that the message "you can't post two consecutive messages in a short amount of time" can pop up without any delay. Can that be that big of a problem? Seems like the computer processing could be put to better use. Does anyone know what the time is? I know it is 9:30 AM here. Let's syncronize our watches.

Crashed my GSS yesterday. I was invited to a field where they have wires at the end of the field, and they're very hard to see, and hard to judge the distance. They're higher than you'd think too. Unfortunately, the way the wind blows, they're right across the approach. I wasn't having any trouble, and I was clearing them by plenty, but as the sun went higher, the wires got harder to see. In fact, the top one was invisible on my last landing approach.

Remnants of a hurricane were coming through; just high winds, but those are fun, and it made for some interesting flying. We shot some videos, and though the guy wasn't very good, I think I got enough footage to put together a short video showing how the GSS flies and lands.

Last flight of the day, all finished, making my approach, and my Sportster just stopped, and I watched the landing gear peel away (hey, my new plastic screws for the gear worked - yay?), and the plane tumbled forward and fell thirty feet, straight down. The invisible wire got me.

When I got to it, it hadn't landed in the road, it was in the ditch. It was upside down, and I could see that it had broken in half at the back of the cockpit. From what I can gather from the damage, it hit on the wing first, then onto the nose, where it broke the prop. It was almost upside down when this happened, because it then slapped down onto the tip of the fin, and dented that on top (not badly), and scratched up the canopy a little.

It looked destroyed. But we made sure we picked up every single loose piece, and carried her back to the field. I was depressed, since it's my favorite single-wing plane, and definitely my everyday flyer. I got it home, and laid it gently on the bench, still heartbroken, and prepared for an autopsy. I started peeling covering back from over half of the fuse. More loose parts, wood sticking out here and there. "I think I can fix this," I said, and slowly started working the loose pieces together, with the aid of some thin CA, some tape, and some foam for propping it into positions for gluing.

I think she's going to pull through. It's going to take a lot of work. But she's worth it. This plane was dropped thirty feet, and most of her is still solid. I haven't uncowled her yet, but the engine mounts still seem to be straight and solid. I won't know about the engine until I get the fuse together enough to remount the landing gear and put a new prop on it, and start it up. I don't think it was hurt.

Looks like the Decathlon project is taking a back seat to the Giant Super Sportster rebuild project, for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and, uh, I won't be flying at any more fields with wires on the approach. I knew better than that.

Update on the wreck. Spent some more time evaluating it. Not done evaluating completely yet, but it hasn't taken a whole lot of work, and the fuselage looks nearly intact and solid, viewed from the outside. I was lucky that everything on the outside could be found. Lots of small pieces yet to go in the inside, and some that just aren't there. Some bracing will require replacement. I'm eying some scrap pieces of carbon fiber linkage to act as substitutions in spots where the lite ply was destroyed.

Landing gear and wheel pants came through without any damage at all. Can't even find where they struck the wire when they were knocked off.

The cowl has a few impact cracks near the top. New cowl time, though this one will work until then. Canopy has some scratches - new canopy needed too.

Since I'm rummaging around inside the fuselage, which required clearing things out while I work, I thought this would be a good time to move my switches around on the side of the plane. When I first put them in, I accidentally put the engine spark switch in the rear, and the radio switch in the front. Time to swap them around!

I'll try to get a photo of the propeller. You can see where it struck the wire; it left some distinctive marks along both blades of the prop. I haven't taken the cowl off yet, so I'll report what I find when I have clear access to the engine compartment.

Good news: The elevator and rudder servos are in the back, all self-contained, and they are all fine. Oh, and Mini-Me stayed put in the cockpit. I'd about given up on making him stay, but the last thing I tried seems to work perfectly! He stayed put through that, so I think he's permanent.

I guess I'll need a few rolls of Monokote. Anybody know which color the red is?

Things are coming together. I'm feeling a little better about it now. At least, not so badly!

I have the GP Super Stearman, all ready to go anyway, and I still have the three glow birds that I'm selling, all set up and flight ready. I guess I was just a little heartbroken to see my best buddy busted up.

After a little whining, I'll get past it! What a baby, eh? ***Sniff***

lol

I really had a good day of flying, right up to that point. I tore up some serious sky in 25 MPH winds, and greased every landing. I was looking pretty good until I looked a little stupid. [:@]It happens. I would have sworn that wire was WAY below me. Which means I must have been making near-misses all day without knowing it. Had I made the landing, that would have wrapped the whole day. I don't have video of the crash, but I have some video of the earlier flights, and the winds. I forgot how much I love flying in really MEAN wind. It takes the whole thing up a few notches. Landings are a real workout. I'll try and get the footage together and get it posted up to YouTube, and get a link in here.

Looks like the Bell Hop (AKA the Faux Cat) is taking way longer to build than estimated. It would probably go faster if I actually worked on it more. Seems like a scratch built plane needs more time than four or five hours every three or four months. For some reason, now thatI have the time to build, it isnot as much fun as it used to be. I used to build a scrach built planein three months back whenI was really busy.If I'd known it was going to take this long I would have kept my Ultimate Bipe with the FPE 1.2, at least I could have been flying it once in a while to give the GSS a break.

Holy cow Jim, sorry to hear that! I can't believe you're even thinking about putting it back together so soon? Mine would have to lay under a tarp in a dark corner of the garage for at least a month....

They do go back together though! I had a rather nasty one this past Feb. That one broke the fuse in front of the wings, in back of the wings, and shattered the firewall. It was an SDS Hobbies 80" Katana on it's maiden flight, and crashed because I had the ailerons reversed, the first time in my entire flying career I had ever done that! That one really upset me because I was so carefull with it!!! Just prior to the crash I had done 2 high speed taxis with it, letting it break ground then cutting the power and letting it settle in both times. The real icing on the cake though, was as it was rotating past 90 degrees, it occurred to me that I had reversed the ailerons - but I couldn't get that thought down to my hands quick enough.... Sheesh!!!

Like you I had the presence of mind to pick up ALL the pieces, and that plane is a great (though a little bit heavier) flier today!
FWIW, I put the shattered pieces of lite ply together like a jig saw puzzle, but to regain structural integrity, I double them with real ply, likely the reason it's now a few ounces heavier.

Best of luck with it, -Al

BTW, I heard flying with a banged up cowl reduces the chances of another "event" drastically?

Joystick, if you're happy just flying the GSS (which I find I'm usually just insufferably pleased to be doing), then you're the luckiest guy at the field. Variety isn't the spice of life, contentment is. Other projects are. . . well, they're just that - PROJECTS. You keep at them (when you're sufficiently inspired), and they'll be done in good time.

prr6100, thanks for the color of the red. I was going to go research this thread using "red" as my search word, and see what I found. That might've taken a while. And I'm not supposed to ask how you know that, eh? lol, okey-dokey!

Al,
We all have those moments where the thought blows through your head and says, "I really %^&*() it up this time, and no excuse for it." Mine was yesterday. Flying at a field where there are not-too-close-but-not-too-distant wires is always taking a big chance. One of my clubs once had a field where, when the wind was right, you took off and landed under telephone wires just 75 feet away (Kennebec Valley Aviators, Maine), that was our alternate runway. At least those wires were right in your face. Easy to avoid that.

The ones yesterday were light colored wires against a light colored sky, and the higher the sun rose in the sky, the more the just disappeared into the sky. PLUS, they were 250 feet away, far enough to lull you into complacency. Or more to the point, to lull ME into complacency. Flying one second, stopped dead and falling the next. By the time I realized what had happened, it was tumbling to earth.

Now I get to pay the piper on that one.

Yes, doubling them with some fresh lite ply will be one of my fixes, in those parts where the ply has splintered. Then, with some careful sanding and some model magic, the repairs won't be visible when it's done. I'm just going to give it an hour a day, maybe two when I can. Unfortunately, those books won't write themselves, and I just used up my spare time this summer. I don't think it'll take too awful long to get her back in shape this way.

I ordered the cowl and canopy today, so I don't think I'll get the chance to test that theory!

According to the Great Planes website, the red is True Red. I guess I'll take a sample with me to the LHS, so I get it right.

I also did some research on the battery situation. At the urging of pgmeyer and ahicks to explore my battery options, I called Radical RC (http://www.radicalrc.com/) and attended the Dave Thacker phone-school crash course for the A123 deficient. In other words, I buttonholed him and made him tell me stuff. Always the accommodating one, Dave told me that the first NiMh batteries (my favorites) that came out were Panasonics, and that the cell failure rate was high, and the discharge rate was very low.

This was compounded by the fact that Tower sold many, many of that brand, so it gave the NiMhs a bad reputation. Today's generations are much improved, very dependable, and they now have a much higher output. They're much better for Rx packs now.

But - even with the higher output, the NiMh packs can fall short, for instance, when a giant-scale model is outfitted with numerous higher-draw servos, and in the JR/Spektrum (and I imagine with Futaba as well), that can put them close to the brownout voltage, because under certain conditions they can't give that "dump" of amperage those servos require.

That's where the A123s came in. They have the ability to "dump" higher amounts of amperage on demand, making them a much better all-around Rx pack. It requires no voltage regulator, because its voltage is just over 6 volts.

Dave also recommended the standard additional measures when you want to be sure; two battery packs through two switches, a separate pack besides for your engine spark.

Al and I were discussing this just lately in PMs, and we figured out that when we'd argued in here, I was talking about apples, and he was talking about oranges. I typically fly nothing larger than my 30CC Super Sportser or Stearman, and I usually fly a single, fairly-large NiMh pack (2700 to 4000), with a separate 4.8 Volt pack for my spark. Al, on the other hand, was talking about voltage regulators and double packs and double switches. But he was also talking about setting up larger birds with higher-draw systems.

So, he was right about his setups, and so was I - about mine.

But now that I spent all this time researching the A123s, something I worked very hard NOT to do until now - I thought I might blend our two trains of thought, thanks to some recommendations by Dave Thacker at Radical RC. The A123s come highly recommended for any Rx pack, but Dave suggested that since I often fly with a 4000mAh NiMh, that I now switch to TWO 2300mAh A123 packs, and two switches. Hmmm. . . I was intrigued, even tempted.[X(]

I'm preparing to begin my Decathlon build soon, and seeing as I haven't chosen my batteries yet, I think I'm going to put together a more Al-approved system consisting of the two 2300mAh A123 packs and two switches. This should also make my flying buddy Paul Meyer happy, as he has been urging me to make the shift to A123s. There. I hope you're both insufferably pleased with yourselves now.

Note to others: If I didn't already have a good battery charger with the balancer, etc., I wouldn't be doing this, because the A123s are absolutely not wall-wart charger friendly. The batteries have to be charged on a good charger, and though they have the advantage of being able to be charged at high rates at the field, they also require maintenance charging with cycling, balancing and monitoring. So - that's something new I need to learn about. And some little device with L.E.D. indicators that Dave calls a MAMA, which helps poor old me to monitor them. Goodness. Whatever happened to the old Futaba AM radios, 400mAh packs, and simplicity? lol - oh, yeah, I left out "hits" and "crashing a lot". . .

"There. I hope you're both insufferably pleased with yourselves now. "
Yup, sure am
Just have a good A123 charger and use the 3 wire balancing technique. I also recommend the balance buddy to test individual cells easily -

Jim, I'm not up on what's been available as far as chargers up to this point, so no clue as to the capabilities of them or the one you have. I can tell you the one I have doesn't need any accessories to balance charge accurately, and the display will keep you abreast of what's going on both while charging and afterward.

The thought is, before going out and buying any accessories for your's to do this, you might want to have a look at this one?

FYI - There's 2 versions of this same charger, this is the aluminum body one. The other one is plastic.

The white balancing port on the side of it has a 3 pin male output for balancing a 2 cell (6.6v) battery. I used a long Futaba servo extension to plug that in to. The other end of the extension will plug in to my HD switch's charge port, which is connected to a Futaba connection soldered to the batteries. Red and black go where you would imagine they might, white is used as the balance wire, is soldered to the jumper between cell one and cell 2. This all makes for a less cluttered setup?

Taken a step further, my setup uses 2 Futaba leads coming from a single battery (plenty of power IMHO), white wire set up as balance lead. They lead to 2 HD switches w/charge ports. The white wires on the receiver side of the switches MUST BE CUT to eliminate the potential for 3.3v to tangle with the signal wire on the receiver buss! This leaves you with the ability to balance charge without reaching inside the plane for anything. You simply plug in the leads from the charger to the charge ports.

Hey guys all of this A123 talk is totally new to me and I am beginning the research on it. Am I correct that a LiFe battery is the same as A123 and so a LiFe charger should charge it? I have a Turnigy Accucel 6 that charges most batteries including LiFe but there is no mention of A123. I know my LHS was pushing the LiFe batteries from LifeSource and I am unclear if they are A123 or not. I think someone mentioned earlier that A123 was a brand name of LiFe batteries but google searches on the internet seem to be unclear.